
6
b
Every moment is spoken for. We are up at six o’clock.
We are drinking lukewarm coffee or watered- down juice by
six forty- five. We have thirty minutes to scrape cream cheese
on cardboardy bagels, or shove pale eggs in our mouths, or
swallow lumpy oatmeal. At seven fifteen we can shower in our
rooms. There are no doors on our showers and I don’t know
what the bathroom mirrors are, but they’re not glass, and your
face looks cloudy and lost when you brush your teeth or comb
your hair. If you want to shave your legs, a nurse or an orderly
has to be present, but no one wants that, and so our legs are
like hairy- boy legs. By eight- thirty we’re in Group and that’s
when the stories spill, and the tears spill, and some girls yell
and some girls groan, but I just sit, sit, and that awful older
girl, Blue, with the bad teeth, every day, she says, Will you talk
today, Silent Sue? I’d like to hear from Silent Sue today, wouldn’t
you, Casper?
Casper tells her to knock it off. Casper tells us to breathe,
to make accordions by spreading our arms way, way out, and
then pushing in, in, in, and then pulling out, out, out, and don’t
we feel better when we just breathe? Meds come after Group,
then Quiet, then lunch, then Crafts, then Individual, which is
when you sit with your doctor and cry some more, and then
at five o’clock there’s dinner, which is more not- hot food, and
more Blue: Do you like macaroni and cheese, Silent Sue? When
you getting those bandages off, Sue? And then Entertainment.
After Entertainment, there is Phone Call, and more crying.
Glas_9781101934715_2p_all_r1.indd 6 4/25/16 12:35 PM